That really hurt me. But by the time--I guess by the time he had gone through two or three
successors that didn't work, he began to turn to me for solace and companionship; and by the
time he died we were--It was as though nothing had ever happened. But there was that
immediate period, when for whatever reasons, we weren't in a very happy relationship.

I don't know how much the organization knew, but some of the senior people must have been
aware of the fact that there was tension.

Q:

Were you aware at the time that the tension between you and Mr. Paley was around “The
Selling of the Pentagon” fight?

Stanton:

Was I aware of it then?

Q:

Were you aware that that was where all the tension was coming from?

Stanton:

Well, the tensions were coming from more than that, but that was the most severe
point. In fact, when I was into the thing up to here and was threatened with contempt of
Congress and I had consoled--had reached my own decision that I would go to jail and [John]
Mitchell, the attorney-general, told me that he was all set to put me in jail--right at the very
end almost of that fight, I discovered that Paley went down to see the speaker of the House
[Carl Albert] and was ready to throw in the towel.

The speaker, who was a friend of mine--as friendly as that distant kind of relationship could
be--got word to me that he couldn't understand what was going on. Here I was trying to